Dollar rises, euro falls on Portugal news

NEW YORK: The euro dropped sharply against the dollar late Tuesday after the Moody's ratings agency downgraded Portugal, fuelling fears of another eurozone country plunging into a Greece-like second crisis. The dollar was trading at $1.4418 against the euro at 2100 GMT in New York on Tuesday, having strengthened from $1.4539 Monday. Against the Japanese currency, the dollar rose to 81.10 yen from 80.80 yen on Monday. The euro fell sharply in the minutes after Moody's Investors Service slashed Portugal's credit rating by four notches to Ba2 from Baa1 and warned that it could be lowered further. "We reached some important progress on Greece last week, but the sense of the market has been that the peripheral debt problems are not going away any time soon," said Vassili Serebriakov, currency strategist for Wells Fargo. "Now with the Portugal situation ... it may be following t...